In the weeks leading up to Xmas, several friends and relatives who are all connected to each other find themselves dealing with love in (almost) all its various forms. David (Grant) is the newly elected Prime Minister who finds himself attracted to Natalie (McCutcheon), a junior member of the staff at 10 Downing Street. Mark (Lincoln) is the best friend of Peter (Ejiofor), who has just married Juliet (Knightley) – who Mark is secretly in love with. Writer Jamie (Firth), after being cheated on by his girlfriend, heads to Provence to write his latest novel, and falls in love with his housekeeper, Aurélia (Moniz). David’s sister, Karen (Thompson), begins to suspect that her husband, Harry (Rickman), is having an affair with someone at his work. Meanwhile, one of his other employees, Sarah (Linney), has feelings for her colleague, Karl (Santoro), but doesn’t know how to broach them. Daniel (Neeson), a friend of Karen’s, is a recent widower who’s stepson Sam (Brodie-Sangster) reveals his own life for a girl at his school. John (Freeman) and Judy (Page) are body doubles working on a movie, while Colin (Marshall) dreams of visiting the U.S. where he believes his being British will attract lots of women.

The glue that binds all these characters together, even more so than writer/director Richard Curtis’s excessive generosity in connecting them in the first place, is the character of Billy Mack (Nighy), an aging singer making a comeback with a cover version of The Troggs’ Love Is All Around, retitled Christmas Is All Around. Whenever the movie is spending time with the other characters, Billy is often there in the background, his cheesy monstrosity of a Xmas record and louche behaviour a much needed antidote to the surfeit of sentimentality and saccharine romanticism that peppers the narrative from start to finish. Even the less “happy” storylines – Harry and Karen, Sarah and Karl, Juliet and Mark – are bittersweet entries that are layered with poignancy and hopefulness. But that’s the point of the movie: it’s a positive message of love for everyone. Even if a marriage founders for a moment (Harry and Karen), or love is a case of wrong place, wrong time (Mark and Juliet), or even if it never gets off the ground at all (Sarah and Karl), all the clichés are in place: love will find a way, love is all you need, love conquers all… That Curtis holds it all together and still manages to make it work despite all the plot contrivances and rampant wish fulfillment that threaten to derail it several times over, is a testament to his confidence in the material.

Of course, he’s aided by an accomplished ensemble cast who rise to their individual challenges with gusto and no small amount of charm. Grant’s dance routine, Rickman’s hangdog expressions, Nighy’s inappropriate smirking – all of these character beats and more help to make the movie a feast of feelgood moments that linger like treasured memories long after it’s ended. Curtis may have laid on the romance with a trowel (sometimes it’s like being battered over the head with a dozen red roses), but this is a very, very funny movie with endlessly quotable lines (Colin: “Stateside I am Prince William without the weird family”), visual gags aplenty, and the ability to spring a number of clever narrative sleights of hand when you’re least expecting them. It’s an appealing, but unsophisticated slice of romantic fairy tale excess that’s bolstered by pin-sharp humour, terrific performances, and a refreshing awareness that it all takes place in a fantasy-based “reality” of Curtis’s devising (where else would the US President get such a public dressing down for his behaviour?). Fifteen years on, it remains a perennial favourite at Xmas, and despite an initial lack of enthusiasm on the part of critics, a movie that has transcended any criticism – deserved or otherwise – to become one of those rare movies that can be enjoyed over and over again, and which never seems to grow old or stale with repeated viewings.

Rating: 8/10 – a movie that tells nine separate stories and which does justice to all of them, Love Actually is a moving, thoughtful, and emotional look at love itself and what it means for a variety of people in a variety of situations and circumstances (though notably, not anyone who’s LGBT); comic and romantic in equal measure, it’s a movie you can fall in love with easily and unreservedly (and any movie that contains Jeanne Moreau in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo has got to be getting things more right than wrong).

Oscar Wilde (Everett) has served his time in Reading Gaol and is living in France, supported by the kind attentions of one of his few remaining friends, Robbie Ross (Thomas). Suffering from ill health as a result of his stay in prison, Wilde is a shadow of his former self, wracked by torment and disillusionment, and his passion for writing exhausted. Against the better judgment and advice of his friends, including Reggie Turner (Firth), and his estranged wife, Constance (Watson), Wilde is reunited with the source of his downfall, Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas (Morgan). They live together, though the relationship is strained, and Douglas’s selfish behaviour begins to drive an irreversible wedge between them. When their families each threaten to remove their financial support for the pair, the relationship founders completely, and Wilde becomes a lonely figure wandering from café to café spending what little money he has on alcohol. With his health deteriorating even further, Wilde becomes incapacitated, and is forced to see out the remainder of his days in a dingy Paris hotel room…

When actors or directors announce that their next movie will be a long cherished passion project, it’s often time to nod sagely and mutter, “that’ll be nice”. Rupert Everett had been trying to get a movie made about the final three years in the life of Oscar Wilde for over five years, and he’s finally succeeded. You can imagine the pitch to potential investors, though: a movie about an alcoholic writer in the decrepitude of his final years, and without any chance of a happy ending. Full marks then to Everett for his perseverance, because despite the downbeat nature of the material, and the sadness of seeing a once great man reduced to abject penury, The Happy Prince is a fascinating and poignant examination of the last three years of Wilde’s life, and how those years took a further, irrevocable toll on him after two years in prison. It’s a largely melancholy, subdued account, but there are moments of joy and laughter and hope in amongst the heartbreak and despair, as Wilde reflects on his success and his subsequent downfall. Unafraid to show Wilde at his worst, and with the worst happening to him, Everett presents an unflinching portrait of the artist as an old man robbed of all his powers.

The movie has all the hallmarks of a grim tragedy, from Wilde, Turner and Ross being pursued in Italy by English thugs looking to intimidate and bully a great man brought low, to the inevitability of Douglas’ rejection of Wilde when money becomes an issue. Everett is magnificent in a role that he’s often unrecognisable in, the quality of the make up obliterating the actor/director’s angular features; he’s like a poster child for rampant, self-inflicted dissolution. What Everett captures perfectly is the sense of a man who knows his life is effectively over, but who clings to it, desperately, and however he can, even if it’s inappropriate (his drinking etc.). Everett, who also wrote the script, is a confident, detailed director, and he has a good eye for composition that some more practiced directors would be envious of. He’s an unselfish actor too, allowing the likes of Morgan and Thomas to shine in roles that might otherwise have appeared to be in subservience to the orbit of Everett’s own. That the movie isn’t as heavy going as it looks is another testament to the skill with which Everett assembles the various elements of Wilde’s post-prison experiences, and the way he weaves the story of the Happy Prince through the narrative, and has it reflect the state of Wilde’s own life depending on where the story has gotten to. For a first-time writer/director, Everett has revealed himself to be someone who should be encouraged to get behind the camera again as quickly as possible.

Rating: 8/10 – though the movie examines the tragedy of Wilde’s final years, The Happy Prince isn’t the depressing, maudlin experience that some viewers might be expecting, and instead is a quietly powerful expression of the will to survive in the bleakest of circumstances and surroundings; with effective supporting turns from the likes of Firth, Watson and Wilkinson, and appropriately gloomy cinematography by John Conroy, this is yet another potent reminder of Wilde the man, and his legacy.

In the summer of 1968, and with his electronics business failing, amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst (Firth) hears about the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round the world yacht race with a prize of £5,000 to the yachtsman who completes the race in the fastest time. Determined to win the prize, Crowhurst gains financial backing from businessman Stanley Best (Stott), and sets about building a purpose-desogned trimaran for the voyage. He also hires a crime reporter for the Daily Express, Rodney Hallworth (Thewlis), to act as his publicist. Problems with the design of the trimaran and getting the right materials delay Crowhurst’s start in the race, and in order to maintain Best’s sponsorship, Crowhurst signs over his business and his home; now he has to succeed. Eventually, Crowhurst, in his boat Teignmouth Electron, sets sail on 31 October, the last day allowed. Leaving his wife, Clare (Weisz), and three children with promises of being back in nine months’ time, Crowhurst soon encounters problems early on in his voyage, problems that contribute to his making a number of rash decisions…

If you’ve never heard of Donald Crowhurst – and fifty years on, it’s unlikely given the circumstances – watching The Mercy may prove a singularly frustrating experience. It’s the true story (modified as ever for the movies) of a man pursuing a dream but lacking in the abilities and skills required to achieve that dream – and knowing it, deep down. On the eve of sailing, Crowhurst tells Hallworth and Best that he thinks it’s a good idea for him not to go, to abandon the idea. It’s a moment of desperate clarity for Crowhurst, and he wants the two men to agree with him and support him in his decision. But the opposite happens: Hallworth acknowledges Crowhurst’s fears as being a normal reaction to the enormity of what he’s about to do. And in that moment, Crowhurst’s last hope is crushed through good intentions. Firth’s performance says it all: Crowhurst is doomed; whatever happens, he won’t win the prize. It’s a terrible, disconsolate moment for the amateur sailor, and for the audience. Now we’re set up for a tale of tragedy. The only thing to do is to wait it out and see just how things go wrong, and why.

But Crowhurst’s story – and this is where the frustration comes in – requires a great deal of guesswork and supposition. What actually happened isn’t in doubt, but the why remains tantalisingly out of reach, which means that the movie has to fill in the gaps as best it can. As a result, Scott Z. Burns’ script becomes less and less gripping as Crowhurst’s voyage continues, and becomes a series of loosely connected scenes that leave the viewer as stranded as the movie’s central character. Marsh is a terrific director – Man on Wire (2008), The Theory of Everything (2014) – but somehow the tragedy of Crowhurst’s story isn’t conveyed as forcefully as it could have been. Firth is good in the role, showing Crowhurst slowly coming to terms with the futility of chasing a dream he can’t ever catch, but Weisz is stuck with a typical wife-at-home role where she’s required to look worried a lot and little else (proving there’s still plenty of “thankless female” roles around in this day and age of the #MeToo Movement). Thewlis is also good as Hallworth (another man whose ambitions weren’t realised), even if he’s more spiv than publicist, and the movie has a beautiful sheen to it thanks to Eric Gautier’s sparkling cinematography. But there’s still a sense, once the outcome is known, that the voyage getting there isn’t as affecting as it should be.

Rating: 6/10 – laced with a sympathetic streak that, given some of Crowhurst’s pre-sailing decisions, is debatable for its presence, The Mercy remains a hollow effort that keeps Crowhurst at a distance from the audience; still, there’s enough in terms of the non-seafaring narrative to semi-compensate for this, and there’s another fine score from Jóhann Jóhannsson to further ameliorate matters.

There are times when the very existence of a movie proves puzzling, puzzling because the content of the movie has already been covered in greater depth, and with far more fidelity, elsewhere. Such is the case with Devil’s Knot, an exploration of the Robin Hood Hills Murders that took place in West Memphis, Arkansas on 5 May 1993. On that fateful day, three eight year old friends – Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore – disappeared. Their bodies were found in a muddy creek the following day. It didn’t take long for the police and the local community to ascribe the murders to a Satanic cult believed to be operating in the area. It wasn’t long either before the police had three suspects firmly in their sights: teenagers Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Misskelley Jr. After Misskelley Jr was interrogated for twelve straight hours, he confessed that all three were involved in the deaths of the children, and all three were subsequently arrested. At their trials, Misskelley Jr and Baldwin were sentenced to life imprisonment, while Echols was sentenced to be executed.

The problem with Devil’s Knot is not just that it’s another movie “based on a true story” and with all the limitations that usually apply, but that the story of the Robin Hood Hills murders and the West Memphis Three (the accused) have been so well documented elsewhere. There are currently four documentaries available that cover the case, and which do so in more depth, and with greater clarity of purpose. They are Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996), its sequel, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000), a further sequel, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011), and a separate entry which covers the whole story, West of Memphis (2012). With all these excellent documentaries on offer (particularly the first one, which is nothing short of exceptional for the access the makers had), it remains surprising that Devil’s Knot was actually greenlit in the first place, let alone made.

Adapted from the book of the same name by Mara Leveritt, Devil’s Knot benefits greatly from having Atom Egoyan perched, however precariously, in the director’s chair. He’s a very talented movie maker, but he’s never seemed as comfortable as when he’s working from a script he’s written himself, and this proves to be the case here. Making the most of a script that doesn’t really tell us anything new and which can be found dramatically twiddling its thumbs from time to time, Egoyan shows occasional flashes of the erudite and ambitious director who has given us such modern classics as Exotica (1994) and The Sweet Hereafter (1997). But these are few and far between, and there are long periods where Egoyan feels like a jobbing director who hasn’t been able to connect with the material – and doesn’t know how to. And yet, conversely, there are moments where he does, and these contain a quiet power that is indisputably effective (and affecting).

Somewhat inevitably, the script tries to pull in various different directions, and by doing so, tries to cover too much ground all at once. This leads to scenes feeling unnecessarily truncated, and others feeling like filler. In its efforts to tell as much of the story as possible, the movie proves disjointed in its approach to the victims’ families – only Witherspoon’s grief-stricken mother, Pamela Hobbs gets a look in, and then only because she begins to believe Echols and co aren’t guilty – while the holes in the police investigation (and there are dozens of them) are allowed to go by remarked upon but under-emphasised. The trial scenes take up most of the second half of the movie but serve only to show that justice is not only blind in some US courts but sometimes half asleep as well, a situation that we’re already way too familiar with for these scenes to carry any appreciable weight. Egoyan gamely makes his way through them, throwing in an occasionally interesting shot, but relaying events in a style that resembles a TV Movie of the Week instead of a fully-fledged feature.

With the screenplay trying to fit so much in (there’s a reason the documentaries all run longer), it’s inevitable as well that some characters come to feel like observers rather than participants. Terry Hobbs (Nivola), Stevie’s stepdad, flits in and out of the narrative and remains elusive until the movie’s end when we learn something unexpected that relates to him. By the time this happens though it’s too late to have much of an impact as we haven’t got to know him well enough. Likewise for Durand’s scary-stary John Mark Byers, a potential alternative suspect whose day in court is remarkable for the way in which he’s let off the hook by all concerned (even the defence lawyers). Egoyan regular Koteas pops up as an expert on Satanic cults, Linn is the police official who knows his case is full of holes but pushes on regardless, and then there’s DeHaan as another potential suspect, Chris Morgan, who confesses then recants and is allowed to do so while Misskelley Jr does the same and ends up in prison for life. All these roles feel incidental to the overall aim of the movie, which in itself isn’t clear. As an undeniable miscarriage of justice, the movie does more than enough to get that across through some of the evidence that’s presented, but elements such as the local community’s willingness to accept the presence of Satanic cults despite there being no concrete evidence to support this, lands with a thud every time it’s mentioned.

More curious still is the decision to focus much of the movie on an outsider, Firth’s crusading legal investigator, Ron Lax. We see him challenging everyone around him to do their jobs properly, and he behaves like a man with a Messiah complex at times, but if the idea is that he’s the viewer’s guide through the maze of “evidence” and supposition that sees the West Memphis Three convicted, then it’s unfortunate but we don’t need him. There’s an awkward scene in the Robin Hood Hills woods between Lax and Pam Hobbs that is pure Hollywood speculation and has no place in a movie that’s striving to be taken seriously as a re-enactment of true events. It’s moments like these, where the script is trying to manipulate its audience, that it undermines its overall effectiveness and leaves the viewer wondering if the movie will ever settle for a consistent tone it can work with. The answer is a resounding No, and like so many other moments or issues this movie has, it’s in too much of a hurry to squeeze in the major plot points, however indifferently at times, and without giving them room to breathe.

Rating: 5/10 – as the movie equivalent of an unnecessary footnote, Devil’s Knot is only sporadically engaging, and on a severely reduced par with the likes of its documentary brethren; perfunctory in a way that shouldn’t be the case when you consider the story it’s trying to tell, this remains an ill-advised project that could have been a lot worse if it weren’t for the occasionally mindful ministrations of its director.

They couldn’t help themselves, could they? They just couldn’t help themselves.

If by now you’ve seen the first trailer for Kingsman: The Golden Circle you’ll know that Colin Firth’s character, Harry Hart, believed to have been killed in the first movie, Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), is very much alive, and eyepatch notwithstanding, looking pretty good. Now, it was a fairly safe assumption that this character would be back, and it was an equally safe assumption that they wouldn’t appear in the movie until some way in, making it a surprise for the audience – and a welcome one at that. But thanks to the trailer, that surprise won’t be happening at all now. Instead we’ll all be waiting for that moment some way in when the character reappears for the first time (and which we’ll already have seen). Now it’s true that his resurrection will make fans of the original very happy indeed (who still remembers the shock of it when he was killed off – apparently – with a third of the movie still to go?), but as returns go it’s not exactly earth-shattering.

But it seems that the makers of Kingsman: The Golden Circle have missed out on a golden opportunity. How much better would it have been if the character’s return had been kept quiet? This would have allowed doubt to take root in the audience’s collective mind, and provided a real surprise when he did appear. Instead the trailer gives the game away, and now we’ll no doubt be bombarded with a million and one online theories as to how he survived, and what his role in the movie will be.

And to make matters worse, the makers have gone even further in ruining the surprise. Take a look at the poster, and see who’s name is first in the list of cast members. Maybe they don’t feel it matters, maybe they don’t feel it’s important, but in this day and age when movies are hyped and promoted and positioned as important cultural events (and mostly they’re not), is it too much to ask for a little less transparency when it comes to the movies? Is it too much to ask to be kept in the dark? And is it really too much for moviemakers to do this? On this occasion, apparently so. But is it really necessary? Well, that’s an easy one: no, it’s not.

What do you think? Yes, you, reading this now. Leave a comment below – it’ll only cost you the price of a few neurons.

If you’ve never heard of Maxwell Perkins (Firth) – and it’s very likely that you haven’t – then Genius, the debut feature by Michael Grandage, won’t actually tell you very much about him. You will discover that he was an editor at Charles Scribner’s & Sons during the Twenties and Thirties, and that he helped shape the writing careers of both F. Scott Fitzgerald (Pearce) and Ernest Hemingway (West). You’ll also learn that he had a wife, Louise (Linney), five daughters, and – apparently – never took off his hat, even at home. But these are just facts about the man. What made him tick, so to speak, what made him so passionate about books and writers, well, that’s another matter. And it’s one the movie, despite being based on A. Scott Berg’s National Book Award-winner Max Perkins: Editor of Genius (1978) and adapted by John Logan, fails to address.

Instead, the movie focuses on Thomas Wolfe (Law), an aspiring novelist whose first work of full-length fiction has been turned down by every other publishing house in New York except for Scribner’s. The novel, O Lost, is long, unwieldy, and overly descriptive in a grand romantic manner, but Perkins believes sincerely that it should be published, though with a fair bit of judicious pruning. Wolfe can’t believe his good luck, and agrees to working with Perkins to wrestle the novel into a more publishable form. Long months pass, and in 1929, Wolfe’s first novel is published to great acclaim with a new title, Look Homeward, Angel.

The two men are polar opposites. Perkins is quiet to the point of apparent catatonia, while Wolfe is brash, loud, and unapologetically hedonistic. He also writes like a man possessed, producing hundreds of pages of prose almost every day, but with no idea of how to corral that prose into a consistent format, or how to self-edit. Hence his need for Perkins to work with him. Wolfe’s success is compounded by his second novel (initially even more long, unwieldy and overly descriptive in a grand romantic manner), Of Time and the River, being just as well-regarded and received as his first. But now, jealousy and paranoia begin to take hold of Wolfe, and the idea that his books are only successful because of Perkins’ involvement, starts to nag at the author, and he takes steps to distance himself from Perkins and claim all the credit. This leads to an estrangement between the two men, as well as Wolfe signing with another publisher.

Genius moves at an agonisingly slow pace for the majority of its running time, and there are no end of scenes where Perkins sits reading manuscripts with nothing else happening within the frame. His is an interior, contemplative existence, allied to a contained, watchful existence that allows for few displays of honest emotion (when he raises his voice in anger to Louise at one point, it’s like a verbal slap across the face, such is the shock of it). Perkins may live most of his life through the pages of the books he edits, and he may be deliberately reclusive in terms of having a social life, but his skills as an editor can’t be challenged. The movie makes this point quite cleverly and quite succinctly, during a sequence where Perkins’ skill as an editor is given the spotlight. At first he reads out a passage Wolfe has written about the central character in O Lost falling in love at first sight. It’s overlong, and Perkins is unconvinced by much of Wolfe’s prose. And so he challenges Wolfe’s assertions at every turn, and soon the passage has been whittled down to a single, concise paragraph. And it’s so much better.

It’s also one of the very few occasions where the movie attempts to speed up or show a sense of urgency, but this is down to the editing of the sequence – step forward, Chris Dickens – rather than anything that Logan’s script or Grandage’s direction does. The slow, measured pace of the movie is its biggest obstacle to being liked, though the way in which Wolfe is introduced to the audience doesn’t help either. Where Firth underplays Perkins to silent perfection, Law is a bundle of energy as Wolfe, but in a way that soon proves wearing. He’s overly voluble, lacks filters, and is unconcerned if he upsets the people around him, a trait that become more and more entrenched the more successful he becomes. By the time Law has theatrically made his way through his third or fourth literary-style monologue, it’s clear that the template for the character has been set. Law is good as Wolfe, but his performance is one that Grandage doesn’t seem able to rein in when needed, and as a result, Law seems more in control of his performance than his director is.

While Linney is consigned to the background as Perkins’ demure, supportive wife, Kidman is given the more dramatic role of Wolfe’s lover, Aline Bernstein. Aline supported Wolfe when he was trying to get O Lost published, but as he found fame and fortune, their relationship became more and more adversarial, thanks largely to Aline’s feelings of betrayal and abandonment. Wolfe became dismissive of her feelings, and the disintegration of their relationship adds some much needed meat to the bones of Logan’s script. Kidman is caustic yet vulnerable as Aline, and it’s a shot in the arm for viewers who may have been thinking that the actress’s best work is behind her.

Despite the performances (Pearce is also on good form as a struggling Fitzgerald), the movie appears deliberately gloomy thanks to an almost monochrome colour scheme that’s been lit in equally dreary fashion by DoP Ben Davis. This makes the movie seem drier and even more constrained than it actually is, and again, Grandage doesn’t have any answers to combat this. Maybe it was a deliberate choice, and the movie is certainly consistent enough for this to be the case, but by making the movie look so unappealing and drab it has a knock-on effect on the material as a whole. It’s one of those occasions where you wonder if anyone was watching the dailies that closely.

In the end, the movie is less about Perkins and his talent as an editor, and it’s even less concerned with his legacy (trotting out scenes with Fitzgerald and Hemingway appears to be an attempt to do this, but these scenes are more about them than Perkins). The focus is on Wolfe and his need to write to the exclusion of all else that doesn’t further his writing. A scene midway through has Wolfe take Perkins to a jazz club. There the differences between the two men are highlighted, but in such a way that Perkins is left adrift as the scene concentrates on Wolfe. What Grandage and Logan have forgotten, it seems, is that Perkins is their main character, and not Wolfe, and this in turn makes one wonder: where was someone to shape and polish the script in the same way that Perkins shaped and polished the novels he helped publish? A fair point, maybe, but not one you’re likely to find an answer to.

Rating: 6/10 – good performances all round can’t help Genius avoid being labelled as tedious, tepid, or perfunctory; lacking emotions that might instil reactions from its audience, the movie is a dry, humdrum examination of literary excellence behind the scenes, and a love of the printed word aside, never takes flight in the way that it should do.

Rating: 5/10 – when an Army payroll is stolen by notorious outlaw Billy Gun (Cianfriglia), expert tracker Clive Norton (Hill) is hired to get it back, but in the process he finds himself up against a variety of obstacles, not the least of which is Billy’s brother, El Chaleco (Manni); an average Spaghetti Western given a much needed dose of energy thanks to Manni’s muscular, spirited performance as the conniving El Chaleco, Bury Them Deep rarely rises above its perfunctory level, and despite cramming in several lengthy action sequences.

Rating: 6/10 – it’s 1965, and the Zander family – single mother Alice (Reaser) and her two daughters, Lina (Basso) and Doris (Wilson) – become imperilled by an evil spirit thanks to the misguided use of a ouija board; a prequel to the events seen in Ouija (2014), this does nothing new in terms of scares and special effects, but thanks to the involvement of Flanagan, at least gives you characters you can actually relate to and care about, and which is a rare and valuable thing indeed.

Rating: 7/10 – Dory the blue tang fish (DeGeneres) starts having flashbacks to when she was younger and lived with her parents, and these in turn prompt her to try and find them, much to the continuing consternation of clown fish Marlin (Brooks) and his more positive son Nemo (Rolence); a sequel to one of Pixar’s most cherished movies, and one of this year’s most anticipated releases, Finding Dory lacks the original movie’s winning charm, and settles instead for being a guilty pleasure retread of Finding Nemo, while being saved from a lower score thanks to DeGeneres wonderful, and still inspired, vocal performance.

Rating: 7/10 – at the dreadfully old age of forty-three, Bridget (Zellweger) feels like love is passing her by, until two one night stands – with old flame Mark Darcy (Firth) and new beau Jack Qwant (Dempsey) – lead to her being pregnant but unsure as to which one of them is the father; a welcome return for Bridget, and with much of the pizzazz and feelgood humour of the first movie, but the whole “who’s the father?” storyline is a poor conceit to hang a whole movie on, and it shows, leaving standout moments such as Bridget miming to House of Pain’s Jump Around, as a much better reason for splurging on this latest installment.

Rating: 5/10 – when Anna (Riesgraf), who’s agoraphobic, doesn’t attend her recently deceased brother’s funeral, the three men who arrive at her home to rob her soon find that Anna has a dark secret that will endanger them all; a brave attempt to do something different in the home invasion genre, Shut In nevertheless remains an intriguing idea that never coalesces into a completely successful whole, but does feature a terrific performance from Riesgraf.

Rating: 6/10 – despite suffering from short term memory loss, symbologist Robert Langdon must endure a race against time in order to stop the release of a deadly toxin that will wipe out billions of people; another year, another Dan Brown adaptation, but this time it’s an adaptation that’s at least bearable, thanks to Tom Elkins’ and Daniel P. Hanley’s editing skills, an enjoyable, knowing performance from Khan, and a script that doesn’t hang around getting bogged down by endless exposition, which, considering Brown’s reliance on it in his novels, is a massive step forward should The Lost Symbol or any further novels be adapted for the screen.

Rating: 5/10 – a formula for producing snow proves extremely harmful if ingested, and soon the guests at a remote mountain top ski resort are knee deep in zombies, both human and animal; similar in tone to the Dead Snow movies, Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies combines daft humour with gross-out gore and flying body parts a-plenty, but as usual with this type of movie, it pays lip service to cohesive plotting, or credible characters, and focuses instead on providing a series of inventive zombie kills – which is pretty much the only aspect it gets right.

Rating: 6/10 – homesteaders looking to head west through Indian country are exploited by a crooked businessman (Ankrum) and have their lives put at risk by his decision to cheat said Indians out of the rewards of a peace treaty, leaving would-be wagonmaster Tom Clay (Cameron) to get the bottom of all the corruption; an enjoyable way to spend seventy-two minutes thanks to Selander’s typically intuitive direction, Cameron’s no-nonsense approach to dialogue, and the joy of watching so many standard Western tropes being trotted out and given such a good airing.

Sometimes, watching old movies can provide the occasional surprise, like seeing an actor or actress in an early role – or movie – when you least expect it. This happened to me recently when I saw National Lampoon’s Senior Trip (1995) (I’m a National Lampoon movie completist – what can I say?). Imagine my surprise when I saw Jeremy Renner’s name come up in the title credits. Imagine my further surprise when it turned out he gave one of the best performances in the movie (though not that much of a surprise if you’ve seen it).

It got me thinking about other stars and their early appearances, and what other movies are out there with fledgling – or fleeting – performances from today’s big name actors and actresses. So, a few quick searches on imdb.com later, and voilà!, this post was born. I hope you have some fun with it, and if there are any other examples that you think should have been included, or are worth mentioning, feel free to let me know.

Leonardo DiCaprio – Poison Ivy (1992)

While it’s well-known that DiCaprio’s first movie role was in Critters 3 (1991), what’s perhaps less well-known is his participation in Katt Shea Ruben’s perverse shadow play of teenage sexuality run amok. But before anyone gets too excited, his role in the movie (as ‘Guy”) amounts to a walk-on part where he comes out of a school building and crosses in front of the camera. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it part, and perhaps best regarded as an example of how good DiCaprio’s agent was back then: out of nothing he got ninth billing.

Robert Downey Jr – Weird Science (1985)

Way back before he became Marvel’s go-to guy for the grounding of their Cinematic Universe, Downey Jr made an appearance in this fondly remembered ode to teenage hormones and the fetishisation of Kelly LeBrock. Cast as “Ian”, Downey Jr plays a bit of a douchebag who acts as a bully to the two main characters. It’s not a particularly memorable role, and there’s nothing to suppose that his career would take off in the way it has – twice – but it’s in keeping with John Hughes’ studied look at teenagers and their idiosyncrasies, and isn’t too embarrassing when looked back on from thirty years later.

Julianne Moore – The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)

As the realtor who holds the key to the reason for Rebecca De Mornay’s psychotic dismantling of Annabella Sciorra’s life, Moore made only her second movie, and met a memorable end in a booby-trapped greenhouse. Feisty and forthright – almost a template for some of her future roles – the Oscar-winning actress catches the eye but still doesn’t quite give notice of how good an actress she really is. That would be left to Short Cuts (1993), one of her most memorable performances.

Colin Firth – The English Patient (1996)

As the movie’s star-crossed lovers, everyone remembers Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas, but when it comes to the actor playing Thomas’s jilted husband, that’s when the mind may well go completely blank. But Firth matches his (then) more illustrious co-stars, and shows that, only a year after playing Mr Darcy in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, that he can play a cuckold just as well as a romantic heart-throb.

Ian McKellen – Last Action Hero (1993)

In amongst Last Action Hero‘s gunfire and car chases and explosions, you may remember towards the end of the movie, the character of Death from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957) stepping out of the big screen and into the real world. As audacious homages go it’s a great example of what made the movie so uneven, but McKellen brings the necessary gravitas to the role, and even adds a degree of nonchalant amusement.

Amy Adams – Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)

Though Adams has a track record in comedies before and since Talladega Nights, it’s unlikely that most people would place her as Will Ferrell’s love interest, whatever the circumstances (though the glasses may have helped). But as Susan, Ricky Bobby’s assistant-cum-paramour, Adams more than holds her own amidst all the manic goings-on and provides a welcome distraction from the otherwise testosterone-laden script.

Cameron Diaz – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

One of a number of cameos in Terry Gilliam’s spirited psychedelic imagining of Hunter S. Thompson’s book, Diaz’s appearance as “Blonde TV Reporter” is brief, but a great example of the kind of “roles” that some stars will take either as a favour to the director, or just to be involved in a particular movie project. Plus it’s always fun to see someone pop up unexpectedly in a movie, even if it’s only for a moment.

Nicolas Cage – The Cotton Club (1984)

Working with his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, Cage’s turn as Richard Gere’s unpredictable, violent brother is another of the actor’s mercurial early roles, and a reminder of the raw, vital talent that has been lost in the welter of tired, mortgage-paying performances Cage has given us in recent years. Taking what could have been a stereotypical role and giving it the kind of spin only he could, it shows Cage acting up a storm and commanding the viewer’s attention.

Jason Statham – Collateral (2004)

Billed as “Airport Man”, Statham has a small but pivotal role in Michael Mann’s L.A.-set thriller, and he more than holds his own in his scene with Tom Cruise. It’s the kind of unexpected appearance that enriches a movie, and lets the audience know that Statham – already an established star in his own right – can still do character work when required… and very effectively.

Natalie Portman – Mars Attacks! (1996)

Three years before she became Queen Amidala in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), Portman took a supporting role as the President’s daughter, Taffy, in Tim Burton’s anarchic alien invasion romp. Sharing scenes with Jack Nicholson and Glenn Close, Portman enters into the spirit of things with gusto, and has one of the best lines in the movie: “Guess it wasn’t the dove.”

1997. While on a mission in the Middle East, Kingsman secret agent Harry Hart (code named Galahad) (Firth) makes a mistake that costs the life of his protege. He visits the man’s wife, Michelle (Womack), and their young son, who is known as ‘Eggsy’. He gives Eggsy a medal and tells him if ever he needs a favour, to ring the number on the back of the medal and say the phrase, “Oxfords not brogues”.

Eight years later, one of Harry’s fellow agents, Lancelot (Davenport) is killed while trying to rescue a kidnapped professor (Hamill). As the membership of Kingsman demands a continuous number of agents, Hart and his remaining colleagues are tasked by the service’s head, Arthur (Caine), with finding a replacement for him. Meanwhile, Eggsy’s home life hasn’t improved. His mother is in an abusive relationship with Dean (Bell), and he and his friends are bullied by Dean’s gang. When Eggsy steals one of the gang’s car he ends up being arrested. Remembering the medal, Eggsy calls the number and repeats the phrase. Soon after he is released and finds himself in the company of Harry.

While all this is going on, the kidnapper of the professor, tech-billionaire and radical environmentalist Richmond Valentine (Jackson) is blackmailing or kidnapping important world figures in order to support his scheme to reduce the world population through the free dispersal of SIM cards adapted for use in any mobile phone. With Kingsman becoming aware of his activities, Eggsy agrees to undergo the training required to become a Kingsman agent. While he competes against the other candidates, including Roxy (Cookson) and Charlie (Holcroft), Harry pays Valentine a visit to find out more about his plans and eventually discovers that the billionaire is planning a test of his SIM cards at a church in the Deep South.

Eggsy does well enough in his training to reach the final stage where it’s between him and Roxy for the position of the new Lancelot. But his confidence and commitment is rocked by the task required of him, and in the Deep South, Harry’s infiltration of the congregation leads to an unexpected and shocking development…

If Matthew Vaughn only ever made comic book adaptations from now until the end of time, it would be a wonderful outcome for movie lovers everywhere. Following on from Kick-Ass (2010) and X-Men: First Class (2011), Kingsman: The Secret Service is a razor-sharp, highly entertaining spy spoof that retains enough drama to give it the edge it almost doesn’t need. It’s a movie that is both self-referential and iconic, and shows just how this sort of material should be handled: with obvious love and affection.

Adapting Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons’ comic book The Secret Service, Vaughn and screenwriter Jane Goldman have created a world where the notion of a “gentleman spy” is still very highly regarded – by the spies themselves, and by the villain of the piece – and where a certain level of style is a necessity. It’s an Old Boys network, run as an elitist organisation that works so far behind the scenes no one’s ever heard of them. With its agents named after characters from Arthurian legend, and its adoption of high-tech weapons to back up each agent’s physical prowess, the Secret Service is a potent mix of the old and the new. From its bulletproof umbrellas to its poisoned knife tipped shoes to its underground hangar full of jets and helicopters and APC’s, this is an organisation that is serious about what it does, but also knows how to have fun while doing it.

The plot is straight out of the Sixties, with a megalomaniac threatening to destroy the world unless his demands are met, his ultra-dangerous sidekick – here Boutella’s artificial limbed killing machine, Gazelle – a variety of ingenious gadgets and some of the sharpest outfits this side of a Milan catwalk. As befits a Bondian villain, Valentine has a mountain lair with enough rough-hewn corridors for Eggsy to kill dozens of his henchmen, and he has a turncoat (or two) within the Kingsman organisation. It’s all presented with a splendid amount of panache (and above all, style), and Vaughn never loses sight of how important these aspects are in the grand scheme of things.

The director is more than ably supported by a first-rate cast that sees Firth cast entirely against type (but boy is he a great choice for the role), Jackson use a lisp to underline the absurdity of his character’s ambitions, Egerton grab the opportunity of a lifetime with both hands, Strong reinforce his status as one of the finest actors around (even if his Scottish accent wavers a bit), Caine provide gravitas and just a pinch of arrogance, and in a minor role as a kidnapped Scandinavian princess, Hanna Alström almost steals the movie with an offer Eggsy can’t refuse.

But what Kingsman: The Secret Service is most likely to be remembered for is the scene at the church, a technically impressive, devastatingly violent, gratuitously vicious, and brutally in-your-face sequence where the full effects of Valentine’s plan are felt. The camera swoops in and out and around the action, keeping its focus on Harry and never once letting up on the audience, as every blow and gunshot and stabbing movement is choreographed to furious perfection. It makes the night club sequence in John Wick (2014) look anaemic by comparison, and is all the more startling and effective by being almost balletic in its blood-soaked aesthetic.

Of course, while the violence is as bone-crunching and quasi-sadistic as you might expect from Vaughn, there’s also a great deal of humour, along with the underlying theme of finding your place in the world. It’s a rich mixture of pointed comedy and heightened violence, and as with Kick-Ass, Vaughn succeeds in ensuring neither element overwhelms the other, leaving the movie to find its own level throughout and proving an exhilarating mix of both. He’s further supported by dazzling cinematography by George Richmond, and there’s a terrific score by Henry Jackman and Matthew Margetson that uses various motifs from other spy movies and still sounds fresh. And of course, special mention must be made of the costumes by Arianne Phillips, her bespoke suits and accessories all now available for the gentleman spy in your life.

Rating: 8/10 – a little too long, with the final showdown in Valentine’s lair proving an unnecessarily two-part affair, Kingsman: The Secret Service is still a stylish, uncompromising action thriller that delights at every turn; Firth is simply superb, and Egerton is a rising star with bags of ability – and then some.

Berlin, 1928. British magician Stanley Crawford (Firth) astounds audiences as Chinese illusionist Wei Ling Soo, making elephants disappear and appearing to materialise himself out of thin air. After another successful show, the arrogant, rude-minded Stanley is met by his old friend from childhood Howard Burkan (McBurney). Burkan is also a magician, and he comes with a proposal: for Stanley to travel with him to the Côte d’Azur and expose a young American woman who is posing as a medium and exploiting Burkan’s friends, the Catledges. Stanley, who abhors fake mediums and enjoys exposing them, agrees to go.

At the Catledges, Stanley is introduced to the young woman in question, Sophie Baker (Stone), and her mother (Harden). He pretends to be a businessman called Taplinger but he is unable to restrain his skepticism, and although he does his best to hide his true identity, Sophie proves adept at “receiving” clues as to who he really is. Still convinced she’s a fraud, he observes her during a séance but is unable to detect any trickery. The next day, Sophie reveals she knows who Stanley is, and she warns him that she really has a gift, and that he shouldn’t doubt her. But Stanley is becoming increasingly besotted with her, and while he has some lingering doubts, he finds himself spending more and more time with her, despite Sophie being wooed by Brice Catledge (Linklater).

Stanley takes Sophie to see his Aunt Vanessa (Atkins). Sophie asks to hold a piece of Vanessa’s jewellery, and when she does, she reveals information about an affair that Vanessa had, and which Sophie couldn’t possibly have any knowledge of. Now convinced that Sophie has a gift, he determines to hold a press conference where he will admit that his previous disbelief has been overturned. The results of a further séance reinforces Stanley’s change of mind and heart. Later, at a ball, Sophie asks him if he has any other feelings about her, but Stanley is baffled by her questions, and she leaves, disappointed. Things come to a head when Aunt Vanessa is involved in a car crash, and Stanley finds himself praying for her survival on the operating table. Will he embrace his newfound regard for the unseen, or will his skepticism return in the face of such a calamity?

This year’s annual movie offering from Woody Allen follows on from the sublime Blue Jasmine, and in comparison with that movie, Magic in the Moonlight is more Woody-lite than anything more substantial. It’s a whimsical tale for the most part, anchored by a Scrooge-like performance by Firth that at times skirts perilously close to complete misanthropy, but which is rescued by the sheer pomposity of the character and his outlook on Life. Crawford’s petulant skepticism and sarcastic attitude verges on the unpalatable throughout, but thanks to Firth, and Allen’s skill as a writer, he has just enough hidden vulnerability for the audience to connect with. However, for large stretches of the movie he’s deliberately insufferable, and it’s difficult to understand what on earth Sophie could see in him (opposites do attract, but here it’s a little too extraordinary).

With its lead character so defiantly unlikeable for so much of the time, it falls to Stone to put some warmth and heart into the proceedings. As the good-natured ingénue, Sophie, Stone is affecting, appealing, effortlessly lively, and the complete antithesis to Stanley, her winning smile and wide-eyed features both endearing and captivating. It’s a more extrovert performance, but with a degree of subtlety that is best seen when Sophie enquires after Stanley’s feelings for her. Her earnest entreaties, and her reaction to Stanley’s dismissal of the notion that he has a romantic interest in her, is cleverly done, and mesmerising to watch.

However, two good central performances aside, this is still a movie that trundles from one scene to the next without requiring much of a response from the audience, or indeed, any real investment in the plot or the characters. The plotting is predictable, and the theme of science versus religion (or at least, the paranormal) is handled with Allen’s usual surety, but there’s still something lacking, a spark, perhaps, that stops the movie from being either memorable or touching. The outcome is never in doubt, and while Allen pulls a dubious sleight-of-hand to get there – as well as twisting Stanley’s arm mercilessly towards the very end – a less conventional conclusion would have made all the difference. (And how many more times will Allen trot out the old May-December romance we’ve seen so often in the past?)

The supporting cast – Atkins aside – have little to do except make up the numbers, and if no other characters stand out as much then it’s no one’s fault but Allen’s, his less than absorbing approach, and lightweight direction failing to lift the admittedly unsubstantial material. That said, there are some delicious lines of dialogue here and there (as you’d expect, even in Allen’s lesser works), and the South of France is beautifully lensed by Darius Khondji, the colours (of the surrounding countryside in particular) popping and flaring in a way that hasn’t been seen in any of Allen’s previous work. There’s the usual round up of jazz favourites from the Twenties and Thirties, but not all the compositions fit in this time, and Alisa Lepselter’s editing often leaves scenes hanging around just those few frames longer than necessary. It all adds up to a Woody Allen movie that feels like a stopgap before the next really good project.

Rating: 6/10 – there’s just enough here to keep audiences occupied, but Magic in the Moonlight isn’t the romantic comedy delight of say, Midnight in Paris (2011); with a curmudgeonly central character holding it back, the movie ends up feeling like a magician’s parlour trick, but one where everybody knows how the trick is done.

Christine Lucas (Kidman) wakes up each morning with no knowledge of who she is, and no memory of her life since her early Twenties. Her husband, Ben (Firth), tells her she was in an accident ten years before and she is suffering from a form of retrograde amnesia: when she goes to sleep each night, her memory of that day is wiped clean and she remembers nothing about her situation. To help her, Ben has put up pictures of their life together, and has left lists of items and instructions to help her get through the day while he’s at work.

After Ben heads off, the phone rings. A man at the other end identifies himself as Dr Nasch (Strong). He tells Christine he’s been treating her for a while and that she should go and look for a camera hidden in a wardrobe in the bedroom. Nasch has persuaded Christine to use the camera as a kind of video diary, an aide-memoire that she can use each day to help her remember things. The last entry shows Christine looking visibly upset and cutting the recording short when Ben returns home.

Two weeks before: Dr Nasch begins treating Christine and gives her the camera, advising her not to tell Ben about it. She begins to make daily recordings, and in the process she learns things that don’t make sense: her accident proves to be a near-fatal assault by an unknown attacker; she and Ben have a dead son; and a friend of hers called Claire (Duff) has been trying to get in contact with her (though Ben tells her he doesn’t recall anyone by that name). As Christine begins to piece together the mystery of the assault and the past ten years, she begins to suspect that someone, either Ben or Dr Nasch, is hiding the truth from her, and that she may be in danger.

Adapted from the novel by S.J. Watson, Before I Go to Sleep is a hard movie to really like. It’s competently directed by Joffe, ably performed by its cast, and wrong foots the audience on at least two occasions with considerable shrewdness. But it lacks any real tension, and despite the best efforts of all concerned, has a too-familiar feel to it that robs the movie of any lasting effect. Christine’s predicament and the limitations of her memory, while intriguing, are too easily overcome; it’s hard to believe that no one’s come up with the idea of a video camera before now. And for the purposes of the plot, Dr Nasch’s insistence on keeping Ben in the dark, while highly suspicious by itself, seems more of a contrivance than something reasonably developed to aid in Christine’s treatment.

Once Christine begins to unravel the mystery of the assault, the clues come thick and fast, and while the movie as adapted by Joffe may think it’s being very clever, it only succeeds in making it easy for its heroine to learn the truth. It also loses a large amount of credibility when Christine agrees to meet Claire at Greenwich, but is later revealed to not even know the address of where she lives. It’s in the mid-section that Joffe trots out a series of twists and turns that threaten to sink the movie’s credibility, but he manages to hold it all together until the arrival of the more generic confrontation that, alas, soon descends from tense showdown to tiresome violent retread.

Later, as the plot begins to unravel further, and the truth about the assault becomes clearer, what has been a fitfully absorbing psychological thriller becomes yet another damsel in distress movie with Christine forced to face off against the man who assaulted her all those years ago. With such a predictable denouement, the movie adds an extended coda that seeks to give full closure to everything Christine has discovered (it also provides an emotional resonance that’s lacking elsewhere), but while it’s an effective scene in and of itself, it comes too late to save matters overall.

There’s also the issue of the movie’s look. Joffe, along with director of photography Ben Davis, has chosen to film in muted colours, and with the dimmest lighting design seen for some time. As a consequence, the movie is drab and depressing to look at, its dour interiors sucking the life out of proceedings and proving an obstacle to the performances, the cast struggling to stand out against the morose and dreary surroundings. Even when Christine meets Claire at Greenwich, the colour mix is toned down so that the natural greens and browns seem as subdued as the rest of the palette. As a reflection of Christine’s mental state, it comes across as pretty heavy handed, while also keeping the audience at a distance from the action.

Kidman plays Christine as a fragile, easily disturbed, yet strangely trusting woman who shows only few signs of being the strong, confident person she was before the assault (it’s only her memory that’s affected, not her personality), and while she’s as capable as ever – only Julianne Moore can show dawning, horrified realisation as well as Kidman can – she’s hemmed in by the character’s limitations (even an actress of Kidman’s calibre can do shock and surprise only so many times in a movie without it becoming repetitive). In support, Firth gets to play angry and resentful in between being supportive and creepy, while Strong does what he can with a character who, ultimately, is there for exposition purposes more than anything else.

There are obvious connections that viewers will associate with Memento (2000), but Before I Go to Sleep lacks that movie’s inventiveness and if they were programmed as a double bill, Joffe’s would definitely be the second feature. With obvious nods to movies such as Groundhog Day (1993) and Shattered (1991), this tries hard to be a riveting thriller but ends up looking and sounding too mundane to make any lasting impression.

Rating: 5/10 – disappointing and routine for most of its running time, Before I Go to Sleep could have done with more pace and more intensity; with few surprises, and even fewer moments to make an audience gasp, this is one thriller that doesn’t fully live up to expectations.